Has the speed of light remained constant throughout history?

[kellystone84]

Has the speed of light always been the same since the beginning of the universe? The reason i ask is i work with a guy who is a strict creationist and he said that despite the universe appearing to be 13 billion years old, the speed of light may of been billions of times faster just after the universe's creation 6000 years ago. I want to be able to refute his argument that the speed has not changed but i am not sure which theory or evidence which proves that light has not changed or how they know the speed was the same around 6000 years ago.

Thanks!

 

[brno17]

Relativity. I love it.

Speed goes at aprox 3x10^8 m/s. It experiences 0 time. It doesn't age at all. Therefore if light doesn't lose its energy by deflecting of anything it will go on forever as it will never die.

Saying that, If time does go slower then its time won't be 0. If it goes any faster then according to Einstein its impossible as the mass of photon will get larger larger causing it to go slower than it should.

The fastest particle known to man is the light photon, actually its not even a particle its a wave.

Anyways long story short. The speed that light currently is in, is in equiliberium.

 

[noeszone]

I think your question as posted touches on Hume's problem of the uniformity of nature:

How are we to infer that the laws which govern light were the same during the early universe as they are now?

Since we don't have one of those fabled "time machines" to go back and see what light was like back then, there's no real way to answer that question. Best we can do is use models to try and "rewind" the universe, but that doesn't mean that's how it was.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm sorry, but neither of the last two messages were correct.

It is difficult to talk about the change of one constant without specifying how other constants change, but there is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-decay" of this claim in Wikipedia.

There is a longer and more scholarly article rebutting this in more detail: Goldstein, Trasco and Ogburn, Astron. J. 78, 123 (1971)

 

[brno17]

I'm sorry, but neither of the last two messages were correct.

It is difficult to talk about the change of one constant without specifying how other constants change, but there is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-decay" of this claim in Wikipedia.

There is a longer and more scholarly article rebutting this in more detail: Goldstein, Trasco and Ogburn, Astron. J. 78, 123 (1971)

Go with this guy.

 

[sophiecentaur]

It's really not worth getting into arguments with creationists. You won't convince him and you'd feel pretty sick if he managed to convince you!
If you like chatting with him then stick to the weather and politics.

 

[pallidin]

It's really not worth getting into arguments with creationists. You won't convince him and you'd feel pretty sick if he managed to convince you!
If you like chatting with him then stick to the weather and politics.

I agree. It's about as pointless as arguing with conspiracy theorists.
Just stick to scientific fact. The Earth I live on is MUCH older than 6,000 years, and that's a proven fact.

 

[MattRob]

It's actually worst than arguing with conspiracy theorists. At least SOME of conspiracy theorists are willing for compromise, and many are simply misled.

Creationism is worst than the geo-centric (aka ego-centric) model of the universe, at least back then they had an excuse for believing things like that. (lack of data).

IMO I don't see any argument in-between mainstream science and the Bible, it's really how you interpret the Bible that makes all this fuss (Poor thing's been re-translated too many times...). The real problem is their belief that the wording in the bible is literal rather than figurative. Try to attack the root of the problem instead of the leaves (though the leaves are always a lot more obvious and in your face.)

What's really amazing is that you can see how people can convince themselves of anything. Creationism is like badly written sci-fi where the Author later goes in and tries to fill the plot holes.

 

[BillyShope]

It's not a creationist/scientist debate. When you enter a discussion regarding origins, you leave the field of science and it becomes a creationist/non-creationist debate. The scientific method is no longer applicable.

There's an Australian physicist...I believe his name is Satterfield, though I might be confusing his name with that of a boxer of the forties...who has put together a strong statistical argument that the historical light velocity measurements indicate a decrease in the speed of light. You might try googling the name.

In any event, without the scientific method, it merely becomes a clash of world views. It could even be called a clash of religions.